


X-Ray

by thebubblejesus



Series: What The Moon Sees In Mantoka, ON [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood, Childhood Memories, Gen, Imagery, Mundane, public school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 15:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18594445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebubblejesus/pseuds/thebubblejesus
Summary: Felix Henley reflects on a childhood memory that gives reason to his career as a science teacher.





	X-Ray

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short-story, connected to another called 'Dr. Henley'; both are original works of mine that are mostly experiments on metaphor and imagery, but I'm still developing a larger plot. It also draws from some of my own memories of school that I'm rather fond of.

The act of walking through a school hallway at night used to make Felix anxious. When he was a middle-school student, his school hosted an evening barbecue, and the crowd bored him with parents complimenting each other on hair, fretting about their kids, and the kids giving reason to the fretting. He wandered off alone into the dark school, to the Biology lab. He knew that this was not what he was supposed to do, but that made it all the more intriguing.

He opened the door of the lab to a thrilling ambiguity, knowing that somewhere on the other side of the dark room, there was a model skeleton standing, staring straight at him with empty orbits and grinning acrylic teeth. It gave him the heebie jeebies, but when the phrase ‘heebie jeebies’ had crossed his mind, he laughed to himself and the frigid air of the room became trivial. He entered, ready to jump at any slightest sound, but he didn’t turn on the lights. He wondered why the kids at his school had to take illegal pharmaceuticals in order to get high when all they had to do was wander into a Biology lab alone in the later hours. His eyes adjusted, and he shuddered as he saw the eerie outline of the grinning skull, the ribcage, and the supernaturally-shaped vertebral column, with four appendages that should serve to ambulate a horror.

When he regarded the spine, a chill went up his own, and he thought about how he exists within the same monster. That beneath his own familiar skin, a talisman of terror lives. He stared at the figure, and said out loud “Huh.” Suddenly the jaw dropped open with a squeak and Felix felt his limbs go numb, his head and gut go cold. His pupils suddenly dilated and let in far more light, letting him see the bones which he felt had stolen the animation from his own. His mind stayed paralyzed, but his legs were no longer his own, now at the sheer will of a creature within him that natural selection had raised and nurtured. He was out of the room before he could fully comprehend what was happening, but when he turned to shut the door and trap the haunted structure, he saw that nothing was chasing him. The skeleton remained in its place, with its jaw hung open.

Felix took a timid step back into the room, hovering above the floor as if he were suspended by the tension of his muscles and the air around him. He flicked on the light and tentatively made his way toward the anomalous anatomical model. He stood a meter away from it and repeated “Huh.” It didn’t move. He drew closer and looked at the hinge of the jaw. He lifted the jaw back up, and when he positioned it how it was before, it fell open again. Upon examination of the hinge, Felix found that it was moist, and the metal was rusty. He reasoned that the cool autumn air coming through the open window had caused summer moisture to condense on the coolest surface around—the metal hinge—and had caused it to oxidize and corrode faster. All it would take to cause it to lose traction would be a slight vibration—like that emitted by the vocal chords of some kid verbally expressing the conquest of a fear that resides within him.


End file.
